a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Utah Jazz Media Day: The Suits

Tyrone Corbin**Playoff struggles: We got beat full. Everybody struggled. Nobody played well. We lost as a team. And we all have to get better…They all did a great job of just going out and working on their game and their body to get better.

**Rotations will be based on… What’s going to give us the best chance to win. Which combination’s going to give us the best chance to win against what opponent. It may change at times…Individually they have to get better, but we have to build a team that’s gonna make us good to compete for the long run during the season.

** Will there be a greater emphasis on outside shooting this year? We have to get better. We have get more consistent in making outside shots, and that’ll impress, uh, improve our inside game. And with the addition of Mo [Williams], and Randy [Foye], and Marvin [Williams], and then the other guys getting better in Gordon [Hayward], and Alec [Burks], and our perimeter guys, and Paul [Millsap], will be out hitting perimeter shots, so we have to do it as a committee, but we expect to be able to make jump shots more consistently.

**On having a full training camp and preseason schedule: It’s gonna be a great time for all of us to compete to get better.

**Was there one specific element that you thought was missing last year that Mo, Randy and Marvin bring? Well, they’re veterans. They been around this league for awhile, they been on some great teams. They had great roles on different teams, and they’re up for this cha–I think the, the, the, the most pleasing thing is they’re happy to be here. And they’re talented guys that’s gonna help us grow. They gonna lead this group of guys and, and give us a chance to get better sooner than later, and they’re happy to be a part of the Jazz family.

Like Yucca Man, it struck me as curious that Corbin’s responses were 1) veteraness/experience and 2) happy to be in Utah rather than talent, production, or even outside shooting.

**Expectations for Enes Kanter: Enes just need to play, man…he made some great improvements last year, so we’re looking forward to him continue to grow.

**Expectations for Al Jefferson: Just continue to grow, man. He’s done a great job the last two summers of working on his body, tryna get into great shape, to be healthy. Change his body a little bit, get a little quicker. And being himself on that post, you know? He’s a tough opponent for any defense to try and stop on the low block. I think his passing got better at the end of last year, and defensively he’s working to get his foot quickness a little faster to be able to rotate and move on the pick and roll. So just for him to continue to develop and be better in the scheme of things.

**Expectations for Favors: Play. Play. Just to play. Like everybody, compete every night on the floor to help us get better, and individually for him to get better.

**On the Jazz’s personnel turnover in the last few years: It is what it is where we are. You know, everybody has to go through some changes at some point in time, and this is a great organization that like to stay where they are and they’ve had great success doing that…but change is different, and we have to continue to change and try and get back on track where we wanna be.

**Do you see someone emerging as the face of the franchise? Yeah, whatever that means. We have a couple guys here that, you know, that could be around for a long time…you know, whatever the face of the franchise is, we expect everybody to just compete and we’ll see, see who, what comes out.

**What are Dennis’ expectations for you? Just continue to do what we’re doing. You know, he’s not here to make household, uh, wholesale changes. He’ll insert where he need to insert and back off where he think he need to back off. (UDQM!!!!)

Dennis Lindsey** This is Ty’s first camp, guys, as you guys know…last year was a very unusual season. Every club, you throw a bunch of young players together with a fairly new coach, and the thing that I’ve been really impressed about watching and reflecting on last season is that Ty was able to keep the group together…that in and of itself is a great platform.

**Can the Jazz really go forward with all four bigs? I think it’s a positive…it’s a topic of conversation that has moved maybe in the wrong direction. I think last year we came together and won, and those four guys were very unselfish, very productive, and Ty used them in a really good way.

** I think we’re going to have great competition here. Ty’s addressed that with the team, that you’re going to earn your minutes, and it’s not necessarily, you know, it’s not a good player equation in a vacuum, guys. It’s the playing group that can allow us to function, to execute, defend, to be unselfish every night. So really we want it to be about the playing group. You can be a good player and be out of the rotation if you don’t execute well or you don’t get back on defense. So I think that Ty’s done a really good job of addressing his expectations that, you know, frankly, we expect this group to come together and be as unselfish as they were last year.

Randy Rigby**On EnergySolutions Arena: We’re adding some other improvements this year and looking at some major improvements over the next five, five to six years of continuing to build up our, our facilities, to be a top-quality NBA pro–properties. And we’ve had very good response from our community as well…we’re very excited about what the community is saying to us of, they’re excited about Jazz basketball. We’re excited about Jazz basketball. So let’s crank up this machine and see what happens!

**What improvements are you referring to? Well, one of the things that we’ve had the blessings from the Millers on is, is that we’re really aggressively looking at a, a new video board. That won’t happen this year, but it’s going to be happening very possibly by next season. This year, we’re going to, we’ve made improvements on a, a, we’re putting in a, upstairs, a, a radio, facility that we’ll be able to do some live remotes from. We’re going to be, we’ve improved also some of our clubs, our sponsor room, which is a kind of a sponsor club, and our VIP room we’ve made major improvements on that, those facilities as well, and, so those are some of the main ones.

**On Dennis Lindsey: He is passionate, which is, you know, is just like Kevin [O’Connor], but he has a fun sense of humor…As high as this means in professional sports, to still see a man take this [decision] to his family, make sure that his family’s behind him, spoke a lot to me about who he is. But he has a fun sense of humor, he has got that fun, southern, I think, approach to things, which is good with having Kevin kind of being that New York attitude.

**UDQM – On the difference in accents between Dennis’ “No comment” and KOC’s “No comment”: A little slower, more drawn out, than Kevin.

Greg Miller**On expectations: If I try to quantify [my expectations], then I think I put undue pressure on these guys, and I don’t want to be unfair to them, but I would certainly expect an improvement over last season in terms of number of wins, or in this case I guess you’d say percentage of wins, and it’d be great to go deeper into the Playoffs than we did last year.

**What has Dennis Lindsey brought from the Spurs to the Jazz? Well, I, I’ve been traveling quite a bit the last little while, so I haven’t had a chance to really see it up close and personally. But I know during the interview, and you know, just the process we went through before making a decision, we extend the invitation to him, or the offer to him, I would expect us to get better in terms of our analytics. And, just, just more, more of, I would say, contemporary analytics and things that maybe we haven’t been real good at in the past that Dennis is very well-versed at, that will, that will help us become better and win more games.

** On the Jazz’s myriad of expiring contracts situation this year: Well, it’s, it’s, it’s obviously going to create an enormous amount of work, but I think more than that it creates an enormous amount of opportunity for us to get better.

Like this:

Related

On Ty’s answer on the veterans: my feeling is that Foye and Marvin were brought in to give G and Burkanov a run for their money. I’m pretty confident Alec and Gordon can outplay Foye and Marvin, but it’s good to have them there so there’s a bar set. Of course, after Raja’s minutes last season, I think Ty has to get better so things work out OK.